


pretty girl with broken wings

by 8The_Great_Perhaps8



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Childhood Trauma, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-24 07:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18162770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8The_Great_Perhaps8/pseuds/8The_Great_Perhaps8
Summary: A lot of hate can be built in five years, but not nearly as much can be spent.





	pretty girl with broken wings

**Author's Note:**

> realized i hadnt posted anything here in about uhhhhhhhhhhh a while and i felt kinda yknow bad about that so i decided to bang this one out. also for anyone wondering i AM working on my casswap fic i just really dont like the high warden. for anyone not wondering u can ignore that.
> 
> major warnings are for torture including waterboarding/drinking acid/solitary confinement

On your fourteenth birthday, you tried to kill yourself.

You hadn’t realized that it was your fourteenth birthday for most of the day. One of the dead servants- not one you had known Before, one that they had taken After and made into a monster- had woken you early, and you had dressed and had breakfast with Lady Briarwood and Lord Briarwood, and you had read in the library while Lady Briarwood worked and then the three of you had had lunch together and then you and Lord Briarwood had done some training- sparring, today, him with his greatsword and you with your rapier, and you had lost prettily, as always- giving a valiant effort but always falling flat, ever since that first time when you _did_ almost beat him and he had slapped you across the face hard enough that you hadn’t been able to see straight for days- and then, once sparring was done and you were back in your normal clothes instead of your training clothes, you had tried to kill yourself. Tried to slash yourself across the throat with a dagger in your new bedroom, hoping that no one would know until you were dead and Lady Briarwood had to puppet you around.

Instead, after a moment of pain and feeling your lifeblood pour out of you, you realized that you were lying in your new bed, head in Lady Briarwood’s lap as she pet your hair.

“Oh, my sweet,” she had whispered to you- she always knew when you were awake, when you were thinking about wandering the castle for lack of sleep. “Haven’t you realized by now, my sweet, that we’ve won?”

“I hate you,” you had whispered, eyes wide open and staring into their reflection in the mirror on your vanity, just across from your bed. Tears had begun leaking out of your eyes as your gaze landed on the new scar across your throat. It would be gone in a few days- Lady Briarwood simply couldn’t abide ugliness- but for now it showed that you had failed. “I hate you. I wish I were dead.”

Lady Briarwood sighed, as though she were a mother at the end of her rope. “What have we done to make you hate us so? We spared your life, we’ve given you the best upbringing we can, given the circumstances, and you just lash out.”

She leaned over you, then, blocking your view of the mirror with her curtain of hair, eyes somehow glowing in the sudden shade.

“We love you, you know,” she had said.

“Then let me die,” you had said. That had been your wish ever since it had become After. You had stopped begging Pelor for help- he wasn’t coming, with the shade eternal over Whitestone, no sun to banish the monster that lived there now- and had started calling for the Raven Queen, begging her to take you away, begging her to release you, to let you vanish and die like Mother and Father and Julius and Vesper and Percival and Oliver and Whitney and Ludwig all did.

But no help came.

Lady Briarwood clicked her tongue. “My sweet,” she had said, “how could we do something so cruel to an innocent little girl?” She had straightened up, eyes staring straight ahead- you never could tell if she was looking at nothing, or having a private conversation with her husband, or even just gazing into the aether for something that couldn’t be found on this plane- and smiled guilelessly. “I’ve told you before, my sweet, that we love you. How could you ever doubt us?”

Before you could not respond- because you rarely respond, anymore, ever since when Lady Briarwood had forced you to drink acid or Lord Briarwood had had you run from his hounds as though it were a hunt- the door had slowly creaked open, and standing there had been Lord Briarwood, holding a cake that you were certain was made to seem charmingly amateur with several candles embedded in it.

“Happy birthday, love,” he had said, smiling. He had shifted the cake to one hand and moved your legs with his other, so that he was sitting next to his wife with your legs over his lap. “Congratulations. You’re fourteen, now.”

Your heart had frozen in your chest, and your eyes had frozen wide open, staring at your face in the mirror. Your last birthday- it had been when you were twelve, because your thirteenth birthday was After, and by the time that your piddling rebellion had failed, it was too late to have a late celebration with the Briarwoods.

Lord and Lady Briarwood continued speaking above you, not in hushed tones- they had no shame for what they were saying, who they were saying it near, _why_ they were saying it- but you couldn’t hear them anyways.

You weren’t really sure how long you had laid there, frozen, staring into the mirror and into your eyes and hoping that it wasn’t true, but after however long it was- hours, surely, with how the candles had melted into the cake, nothing left of them but a few scraps of wick immortalized in the wax coating the frosting- you realized that you were lying there, still staring at your reflection, with the cake on the bedside table and the serving knife lying next to it.

You had stood from the bed dizzily and approached the cake slowly, staring down at it for a few moments, remembering your twelfth birthday- there had been a cake, and you had insisted on blue, for some silly reason, and Vesper had gotten you a pretty dress and Ludwig and Oliver and Whitney had gone in together to get you a rapier and a book, and Mother had had the sort of pinched look on her face that made you squeal with laughter when you realized that she had thought that the three of them had only intended to get you the book, and Julius had gotten you a painting set, and Ludwig had gotten you an entire basket full of sweets, and Percival had made you a little locket that moved when you opened it, with a stag coming out of the bushes, and Mother and Father had gotten you the cake, with twelve bright candles, and you had blown them out and everyone was laughing and everyone was _happy_ -

And you step out of the memory and forward to the vanity, and had stared down at the hideous cake, now coated with candle wax and gone cold, and you had picked up the serving knife.

Oliver’s and Whitney’s birthday was supposed to be in two weeks, when the Briarwoods had come. It was supposed to be after, not After, and they would have been turning fifteen, and you had already gotten their presents- Oliver you had gotten an embroidered sash from one of the caravans, one which could hold a scimitar without slicing him, and Whitney you had gotten a hair ribbon, from the same traveling merchant, one which glowed softly in the darkness unless it was in its mahogany wood container.

Lady Briarwood had burned both of them when she had been getting rid of everything.

You turned the knife over in your hands. It caught only the smallest gasps of light in the darkness, from when your lamp managed to get past your shadow.

It was sharp.

Ludwig had been thirteen. Thirteen and a _half_ , he would have reminded you, so proud of those extra months. He had been looking forward to turning fourteen- he had wanted to go to the Menagerie Coast, to see an ocean that could be swam in, an ocean that didn’t try to beat you against the rocks and stones with its unforgiving chill and currents.

Ludwig had been thirteen.

You looked down at the cake they had made for your fourteenth birthday, and you had looked at your eyes in your reflection, and you had looked at your knife, and you had tried again.

You woke up the next day in your bed, your neck and wrists bandaged, your lamp unlit and your door locked.

You had enjoyed those punishments, early on. You had loved being left alone, daydreaming that you were plotting and finally going to break free and escape and kill every single one of them, with what little they allowed you to keep in your room.

They had left you there for three days, that time, in the darkness and the silence with nothing to eat but the bloody waxy cake, and you had been nearly half-dead when they let you out, Lady Briarwood gently chiding you and reminding you that good little girls didn’t get punished.

You had wept in her arms.

That wasn’t the last time you tried to kill yourself, not by a long shot. It was just another way to burn, really, since Lady Briarwood had her ways of keeping you from the Raven Queen’s embrace. The brief moment of pain, the euphoria of near freedom, it was well worth whatever punishment they could dream up. Locked in the darkness, left without food, forced to spend hours with their next prey, it didn’t matter. Seeking death was worth anything, on the off chance that you could, perhaps, finally find it.

You hated them the most in those moments, right after you realized that your quest had failed again. You hated them when they were soft with you, when they were kind to you, when they made you doubt that they really hated you at all.

You still hated them when they were hurting you, but they were supposed to hurt you. They weren’t supposed to say sweet words to you and call you lovely and tell you that everything was alright, now.

They were supposed to be cruel.

Five years, though, is a long time to hate anyone. Five years After, but really only four and a half, maybe only four, really _with_ them, living with them, from rebelling against them at every turn to strategizing to minimize the pain to becoming desperate for them, like a prisoner addicted to the only ray of sunshine coming into his cell.

Becoming desperate to be what they wanted.

Because, the thing is, as much as you hate their kindness, it is the only respite you have. When they are kind to you, you can almost pretend that they are Mother and Father, that it isn’t After at all, really, there isn’t a Before and an After, there’s just you and them and everything is alright. It would be nice for everything to be alright.

The thing is, there’s a lot of things to hate, in five years- four and a half, maybe- really, probably only four. There’s lots of things to hate.

You hate the girls they bring to the castle, on occasion. Shaking little things, slender, pale limbs, long dark hair, looking nearly like you except for the softness of their eyes and the terror knocking their knees together like newborn foals. You hate _them_ for being pathetic- you’ve lived like this, you can stomach it, so why can’t they? Why can’t they, in their peaceful little lives down in Whitestone, be content? They still have their families, they still have their girlish daydreams, they still have their anger- oh, they’ve proved that against you enough, when Lord and Lady Briarwood put you and whichever little tart they’ve got now in a room together and let the girl take out her rage on you, as though it’s your fault that they were stupid enough to be seen when the Briarwoods were walking through town. You hate them principally because they are idiots, not knowing enough to know how to escape the Briarwoods, not knowing how to follow the new rules of Whitestone, ever since it became After.

You hate Keeper Yennen a lot, when the Briarwoods give you a moment’s silence with no book or handiwork to occupy yourself. You hate him because he sent you back to the Briarwoods, wrapped with a ribbon, convinced that you could save Whitestone, a thirteen-year-old girl with barely enough training to be able to hold a dagger without cutting yourself against the Briarwoods and their hordes of undead and their living allies, and then he ran away when he lost. You’re certain that he hates (or, at least, hated) you, too, with your betrayal of their continued planning- but what do you care? He did this to you, he forced you back to them, he as good as tortured you himself, and then begged Erathis to save himself and his people, leaving you in the cold of the castle. You hate _him_ , principally, because he’s a coward.

On dark nights, you hate your family for not protecting you. You hate them for dying and leaving you to live, you hate Julius for dying when he was meant to be the strong one; you hate Vesper for dying nobly by jumping from the tower, a beautiful death until she hit the ground and left her intestines spilling out for days; you hate Percival for running and leaving you in the cold forest with three arrows in your back and Yennen’s revolution; you hate Whitney and Oliver for having their birthday two weeks After and making you buy a present that they’ll never even see; you hate Ludwig for being weak and sickly; and you hate Mother and Father for letting the Briarwoods in in the first place.

On darker nights, you hate yourself. You hate yourself because you are weak and a turncoat and a traitor and won’t even do everyone the favor of killing yourself. You hate yourself because you fall for the Briarwoods’ tortures and for their persuasions, you hate yourself because you refuse to take responsibility for what you did, you hate yourself because your back still aches where those three arrows sunk in, you hate yourself because you are older than your older brother was when he died, you hate yourself because you hate everyone else, you hate yourself because you fallen, gone emotionally prone, head laid on Lady Briarwood’s lap as she strokes your hair because you are desperate for any happiness, any respite, and you hate yourself because you are still alive.

You learned that your brother was still alive when you were sixteen.

Anna let it slip- you were supposed to call her Lady Ripley, but Lady Briarwood hated her so you didn’t. Supposedly, she had said it by accident, but Anna never did anything by accident. Her mind was always calculating, her eyes always focusing on the calculations she was making, never entirely focused on the people around her, as she was busy figuring out their weaknesses.

She let slip that Percival was alive, supposedly by accident, and then continued on with her small talk, about the weather and her experiments and whatever other little thing she thought would wander into a woman’s mind, and you hated Percival.

You hated him for making it seem as though he were dead, you hated him for making you selfish because you had hated him when he was dead, you hated him for being alive and free instead of dead and free, you hated him for leaving you behind again, and you hated him for not saving you. You hated him for all the reasons you had before and now you hated him for more, for whatever he had gotten to do while he was alive, while he was free, while he was far from the Briarwoods.

You wished he really _was_ dead. If he were dead, you wouldn’t have to wonder what he had gotten to do while you were trapped there. If he were dead, you wouldn’t be so left behind. Just the same left behind you had been when he had been dead, not the left behind of someone unloved enough to be left in in the cold of the forest, with three arrows coming out of your back.

You had gone to Lady Briarwood, then. You were desperate, and she could be kind, sometimes, and you wanted kindness, then, in the lack of kindness from your older brother, who had abandoned you.

“Oh, my darling, hush now, hush,” she had whispered, stroking your hair as you knelt before her, your head laid in your lap. “Hush now, hush. He’s hurt you, I know, but he doesn’t matter anymore. He isn’t your brother anymore, my sweet. He isn’t anything. You’re a Briarwood now, my sweet. We’ll take care of you. We love you.”

You loved her in that moment, and it felt like more than you had ever loved anyone ever before.

You hated Percival for a long, long time, leaving behind how much you hated your poor dead family, because Percival was alive and he did nothing, and he didn’t care, and you wanted him dead. You wanted him to hurt the way you had hurt, and you wanted him to know what it was to be left behind in terror, and you wanted him to have to endure everything that you had had to endure.

When you were thirteen years old, you had led a rebellion.

It wasn’t a very good rebellion. You were young, and injured, and still desperate for your family, and you had climbed the slope to the castle, trying to be noble in your ragged leather armor, and the Briarwoods had killed all who had marched with you- Lady Briarwood with her casual spells and Lord Briarwood with his unnatural speed and strength- and they had left you standing there, surrounded by corpses, shivering and shaking like a baby deer, and they had taken you in their arms and called you poor thing and told you that you shouldn’t have had to fight.

And they had shackled you to a wooden chair and poured boiling water over you.

You had hated them then, in the dark room in the wooden chair under the burning water, and you had screamed every curse you could remember at them as they kept on pouring the burning water on you and laughing at your curses cut in half by shrieks.

And when it was over and Lady Briarwood had touched your burns softly, you had wanted to do whatever she wanted you to do in order for her to stop.

And she had wanted you to write letters, and that was easy enough, you could write letters all day long, and all you had had to do was write one little letter to Keeper Yennen.

And then, when Keeper Yennen’s letter came back, he had apologized for being afraid, for not following you, for letting the rebellion fail.

And in that moment of reading that letter, you hated Keeper Yennen for being too cowardly to start his own damn rebellion instead of making you do it. You were thirteen and he was forty-three and you had nothing and he had armor and holy powers and your family was two months dead and he had never had one.

You wanted justice for what had been taken from you, and he only wanted everything to go back to normal.

You hated Keeper Yennen in that moment, and that made it easier to write the letters Lady Briarwood asked you to. It made it easier for you to trick Yennen, who was a coward and a monster anyway, when you hated him.

Father Raynal, at least, had had the dignity to die in the rebellion.

For those five years, he was the only person you ever didn’t hate. He stood with you and he died with you and he, at least, wasn’t a coward or a turncoat or a monster.

When you were nearly fourteen, you got Keeper Yennen to attempt another rebellion, with you as his man on the inside.

But you were no man. You were a little girl who wanted to be happy and safe.

Lord and Lady Briarwood slaughtered over a hundred residents of Whitestone on the day of the second rebellion. They took you to see the hangings, and Keeper Yennen stared at you from the platform as all the rest of them dropped and hung and danced from the end of their nooses like puppets.

You tried to kill yourself one month, two weeks, and five days later.

You tried to kill yourself that day, had made your way to the top of the tower and stood on its edge, and Lord Briarwood had grabbed you around the waist and spun you around before he kissed you on the forehead, and told you to watch your step.

You screamed at him then, and bit him, and he laughed and he bit you as well, and you bled from the neck and he drank it up and he took you back to your bedroom and he left you lying on the floor, neck still bleeding.

You had wished him dead, and you had wished Keeper Yennen dead, so that his eyes would stop staring at you in the darkness, accusing you, blaming you when it was all _his_ fault, and you had wished Lady Briarwood dead for killing them, and you had wished yourself dead for letting it happen.

You had been locked in your room for four days that time, nothing to eat or drink, and when the door had finally opened, you had begged Lady Briarwood for any kind of drink, any kind of drink at all, and she had clicked her tongue and knelt in front of you, pulling you up by the chin so that you were looking into her eyes.

“Did we learn our lesson, dear sweet?” She had asked, and you had nodded, desperate, desperate to give the right answer, whatever answer it would be that would give you your freedom.

“Good girl,” she had purred, and she had gently poured some water into your mouth, even as you coughed and choked, and she had kept smiling and you had kept trying to drink.

When you had been fifteen, they had locked you in your room for five weeks, with nothing but a bucket of water and one loaf of bread.

You had seen Whitney and Ludwig and Julius, in turns and all at once, and they had spoken to you and you had spoken back. You had begged Ludwig and Whitney for forgiveness, now that you were older than them, and they had laughed and forgiven you and grown devilish horns and had laughed at you and had told you that your soul was promised to the hells. Julius had done the same, except he had told you to be brave, and to persevere, and that he knew you could do it, and you had cried with your arms out for a hug as though you were a child, and he had hugged you and it had felt like nothing, and when the door creaked open, Lady Briarwood had taken you in her arms and you had wept with relief and she had hushed you and pet your hair and called you her sweet.

You had been good for months after that, so desperate for Lady Briarwood’s approval, for her touch, for her soft touches and her soft words that you hated and craved all in equal measure, and you had tried to become what she wanted.

And she had rewarded you, in the end, with a brass knife into your shoulder.

That’s when you remembered that you hate her, that you hated her soft words and her soft touches which were only ever a mask for the hard touches and the stabbing touches, and you had wanted her dead.

You had never wished anyone dead until After. Even when you fought with your siblings- and you had fought with everyone, Before, because you were prickly and stubborn and opinionated and outspoken and so was everyone else in your family except for maybe Percival and that was only sometimes, and even for how much you had fought with them and how much you hated them sometimes, you had never wished them dead. You had always known that the next day would come, that everything would be alright after you had a bit of time to calm down.

You had started to do a lot of things After that you never would have done Before. You deferred, you demurred, you were silent and you were soft and you were a traitor.

The only thing that never changed After was that you were never a coward.

You will never be a coward.

You were seventeen when your brother returned to you.

You had been in the library with Anders, provoking him, being cruel to him, and you had stood by him and been his distraction and you had fallen when he had cut your throat as the half-elf man had entered.

In that moment, that half-second between standing upright and lying on the floor, you had hated the half-elf man. For not being your brother, for making Anders cut your throat at all, for fighting Anders when that should have been _your_ privilege, and for bringing Percival back to you without an apology.

Percival had acted like you should have forgiven him, like you should have acted as though nothing ever happened, that you were still twelve and he was still eighteen and there was no dinner and no slaughter and no monsters and no abandonment and no arrow in the shoulder, no arrow in the spine, no arrow in the side and no new family.

You had wanted him dead right then, but you couldn’t, not when he was finally back, because you had also wanted him with you, and you had wanted him to stay, and you had never wanted to let him go, and you had wanted to stab him through the heart.

And when he had told you to go and wait in your bedroom, you had told him no, and you had told him that you would go with him, and he had called you annoying, and you had wanted to stab him six times over for trying to be Julius, for trying to be your older brother when he had been dead for four years and gone for five, and you had wanted your brother back when you were weak and now that you were strong you didn’t need him and you hated him for thinking otherwise.

You had put on your mother’s armor.

No more ragged leathers, no pieced-together scraps, no hopeless rebellion against people who were too strong.

You had worn your mother’s metal armor, and you had wanted your mother standing there with you, and you had wanted your older brother dead.

You walked with him and his party down, into the bowels of the castle, and you watched them murder a ghost and you could _feel_ the itch in your palms, the desperate need to murder a de Rolo, the helpless realization that you were not your brother’s weapons, but the ghost. You were not the monster-hunter but the monster, not the knife but the neck, not the arrow but the target.

You had wanted your brother dead, but you had known that it would be you.

And you had kept walking.

Outside of one room, your brother had offered you a potion. Earthy, brown, he had held it out to you, swirling it around, and had asked you to drink it, to prove that you were under no influence but your own.

And you had taken it, and you had stared into it, and you had wondered if it was all a trick. If the kind thoughts you had had for the Briarwoods and the cruel thoughts you had had for the de Rolos were tricks from their influence, if all the hatred could be come from nothing, not your fault, nothing your fault anymore. You had held it up to the light, and you had wished that you could believe it, and you had drank the potion.

Percival had laughed, as though it were a great trick he had played on you, and he had told you that it was just a healing potion, but it proved that you were your own, that you wouldn’t have drank it had you been held under their thumbs, and you had held your tongue as you had so many times before over the past five years, and he had looked hopeful and you had wanted to crush it.

You stared at Percival on the other side of the glass.

“Everything will be alright, Cassandra,” he was saying, over and over again, five words desperately repeated as though there were anything to be gained, and you had desperately wanted him to be right, and you had wanted to take him and let him hug you and tell you that everything would be alright without being on the other side of a glass wall.

“I am a Briarwood now,” you had said, Lord and Lady Briarwood on either side and the half-elf man behind them and you had taken your hand away from the glass wall and tried to turn, but you saw Percival’s face fall anyway, first into disappointment and then into hard anger, and then you were facing away.

When you were twelve years old, you had tried to run away. You had tried to take the coward’s way out with your older brother, and you had sneaked out of your bedroom and down into the basement, searching for the secret escape route, and you had found Percival on the way, and you had unlocked his cell and his chains, trying not to flinch at his new scars and his new terror, and he had been slow and cold and you had taken his hand and ran out of the basement and into the cold woods, and the hounds had sounded behind you, and the hunters had thundered behind them, and Percival had ran and you had ran and the forest had been dark and twisted and Percival had pulled ahead and you had heard the whistling, and the arrows had landed _thunk-thunk-thunk_ in your back, and Percival had let go of your hand before you had even begun falling to the ground, he had let go of the hand that you had used to guide him out of the dungeons and into the woods and around the trees he could hardly see without his bifocals and he had let go of your hand and he had as good as killed you with that release.

And when you were seventeen, you had stared at your older brother from the other side of the glass wall, your hand against his with the thick green pane between them, and you had taken your hand away first.

You waited with Lord and Lady Briarwood on the top of the ziggurat, along with their new half-elf pet, and your brother survived when you let go of his hand when you never could, and you watched him slaughter the two people who had showed you kindness in the last five years, and you had wished that you had killed him in that room with the green glass pane, and the goliath dangled you over the edge of the ziggurat by the neck.

“Go ahead,” you choked out, only barely breathing. “Go ahead, kill me, it’s what I deserve.”

“Please, Grog,” Percival said, and Grog set you down on your feet.

When you were twelve years old, you had been locked in your bedroom for a week with only some scant sunbeams and the occasional visit from Lady Briarwood for company, and you had stared at your hands for most of that, seeing the blood coating them from your father and from Whitney, and you had prayed whenever you saw a sunbeam, desperate for someone to come back and save you, because you had been weak and afraid.

You were not a coward when you stole Lady Briarwood’s keys and snuck out of your bedroom and down into the basements to go to freedom.

In the tunnels, Lady Briarwood had come back to life, and you should have warned him about her tendency to do that. You watched her run, watched her invisible feet leave all too obvious footprints, and you had considered going after her, because you wanted her dead and you wanted your brother dead, and you had not gone after her. Percival asked you what you wanted to do to her, and you smiled the cruel grin that you had developed over the past five years, and you had her thrown into the acid pits.

When you were ten years old, you and Percival had gotten into a terrible spat. It had been some argument over whether some book in the library had belonged to you or to him, and he should have been too old to get into silly fights like that with you, he should have been in his group of Julius-Vesper-Percival and you with Ludwig and Whitney with Oliver, but the two of you had gotten into a spat anyway, and he had told you to just walk away, and you had told him that you were no coward, and he had told you that as true as that may be, you were certainly an idiot, and you had bitten his hand.

When you were fourteen years old, Lord Briarwood took you into the library and had you read over some of the letters he had written, asking you whether or not you thought his phrasing was appropriate, what sort of syntax he ought to use, and he had nodded thoughtfully at all of your suggestions, and at the end, he had patted your head and called you an idiot.

And he held you by the shoulders and bit deep into your neck, sucking out all the blood that he could, and you had bled.

You were seventeen when you burned Lady Briarwood, and you were seventeen when your brother came back, and you hated him so much for having the nerve to come back and for having the nerve to treat you kindly and for having the nerve to kill the kindest person you’ve known for the past five years and for having the nerve to be your brother and for having the nerve to be alive.

And he still hugged you at the end and told you he loved you and said that everything was alright and told you that everything was going to be okay and told you that he was sorry that he had left you behind-

And after five years of hating him for letting go of your hand, after five years of hating him for leaving you behind, after five years of wishing that you had never lost him-

You hadn’t ever expected him to actually apologize for leaving you behind.

You had expected him to tell you that he hadn’t meant to. You had expected to hear that it was all an accident. You had expected him to hate you as much as you had hated him, as much as you had hated yourself, and he had forgiven you and apologized.

And as he hugged you, and you remained still and stiff, you brought your arms up and gripped him tightly and you never ever wanted to let go of him again.


End file.
